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Appendix B: Error Messages
Errors About Boxes
Another common error (actually just a warning) refers to an underfull hbox (or vbox).
These errors are harmless and may be safely ignored. They mean there is more blank
space on a line (or page) than L
A
T
E
Xthinks is aesthetically pleasing. (L
A
T
E
Xis very
fussy.)
Sometimes underfull hbox messages are the result of using the linebreak command (\\)
inappropriately. L
A
T
E
Xwill generate this warning if you use \\ just before or after a new
paragraph or before starting an environment that begins on a new line anyway.
Errors that refer to “overfull hboxes” mean that a line is too long. For example, you
might get a message such as this one:
Overfull \textbf{hbox} (19.45158pt too wide) in paragraph at
lines 1206--1215
L
A
T
E
Xis warning you that a line sticks out into the margin. It was forced to do this
because otherwise the line would contain unacceptably wide white spaces. Depending
on how the output actually looks, you may or may not want to correct the problem.
To correct it, you could reword the sentence so that it breaks better, or instruct L
A
T
E
X
how to hyphenate a certain word. Suppose L
A
T
E
Xdoesn’t know how to hyphenate the
word “environment” that occurs in the line. You can make L
A
T
E
Xput the hyphens in
“environment” temporarily or permanently. To do it permanently, put the following
command in the preamble (note: more than one word can be added in the command if
words are separated by spaces):
\hyphenation{en-vi-ron-ment}
For a temporary fix, put discretionary hyphens \- in theoffendingword where it appears
in the text. This is a one-time fix, and unused discretionary hyphens do not show up in
the text:
en\-vi\-ron\-ment
Errors Relating to Memory
Sometimes L
A
T
E
Xcomplains that it’s out of memory, but it usually isn’t. The symptoms
listed below can be fixed as described:
It won’t do all your tables or figures
Put \clearpage between them.
It won’t do a three-page table
That’s right, it must be broken up.
You just want one big paragraph
Sorry, L
A
T
E
Xneeds breaks.
You are using tabular
Did you leave out a \\
or have too many tabs on a line?
It won’t take the caption
Use \caption[short list entry]{Very long caption}
to trim size for listoftables/figures entry
You have nested environments
Are they in First-In, Last-Out order?
April 2007